I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity.

Politicians are not born; they are excreted.

Poor is the nation that has no heroes, but poorer still is the nation that having heroes, fails to remember and honor them.

It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others and to forget his own.

Read at every wait; read at all hours; read within leisure; read in times of labor; read as one goes in; read as one goest out. The task of the educated mind is simply put: read to lead.

We learn nothing from history except that we learn nothing from history.

It is not enough to acquire wisdom, it is necessary to employ it.

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.

Nothing is more unreliable than the populace, nothing more obscure than human intentions, nothing more deceptive than the whole electoral system.

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

You'd be surprised just how fast you can close the door on your past. Learn needlepoint. Make a stained-glass lamp.

No matter where I've been overseas, the food stinks, except in Italy.

I was once naïve enough to ask the late Duke of Devonshire why he liked the town of Eastbourne. He replied with a self-deprecating shrug that one of the things he liked was that he owned it.

We need more science, but what we especially need is science fiction.

If you do something really cognitively demanding, like buying furniture, it turns out buying furniture is one of the most difficult things we do. Go into a furniture store and look at a sofa.

Your awareness has its source in unity. Instead of seeking outside yourself, go to the source to realize who you are.

In a great romance, each person plays a part the other really likes.

I like men. They are hugely entertaining, but they have a lot of shortcomings and you just have to bear those in mind.

We know that the body needs bread, therefore we seek for bread for it: so must we seek for the food of the soul.

We all, at some point, grow old and acquire other qualities, and these can always be turned to good advantage.